The Cast Stone (39 page)

“Gandhi.”

“Yeah, him. We need another one like him. Think you're man enough?” Leroy raised his chin higher, pointed with it toward Ben.

“He walked to the ocean to make salt and kicked the English out of India.” Ben thought about the old movie, remembered images of dusty feet, and men beaten with bamboo rods.

“Think about it. You can't ever buy enough guns and bombs. I know you have money, but can you buy even one fighter jet, can you put a satellite into outer space, drop bombs from up there on Washington?”

Ben remained silent, accepted the truth of the old man's words. His head began to throb, little bubbles of pain, a pulsating ache. He consciously relaxed, let his shoulders sag, and breathed, slow, deliberate deep inhalations, and controlled release.

“Did it change you?”

“Did what change me?”

“That screw in your head.”

“No.” Ben answered quickly. He thought about it. It hadn't changed him, he was the same Ben, the same convictions. Then he became acutely aware of the numbness that ran down his left side. “Yeah, a bit.” He changed his answer. He was a changed man. He was slowed down physically. Mentally he was as sharp as ever. He thought about that too. His mind was sharp but it wasn't as ever. The fog was gone. That haze that accumulated with age had dissipated. The mist in his thinking that he became so accustomed to, or perhaps because he had no reference to anything other, that he perceived it as normal wasn't there anymore. His thinking was crystallized.

“Yeah, Uncle. It has changed me.”

“Tell me about it.”

Ben was about to tell Leroy about the numbness and the mental acuity, but when he opened his mouth, his answer surprised him. “I used to be afraid.”

“Of what?” the old man still had strength in his voice. A bit of power.

“I wasn't afraid of death, well not much, it wasn't the dying part that scared me. When I first found out I was in trouble with HS, I was really scared they were going to torture me.”

“And they did.”

“That's right. And I'm not afraid of it anymore.”

“You survived it.”

“I survived it.” Ben and Leroy were on the same page, nodding toward each other as they spoke, echoing.

Leroy carried it forward. “It was bad.”

Ben nodded.

“Hurt like hell.”

“Oh, Yeah.” Ben remembered.

“But now you're okay with it. Not with the torture. I mean you're okay with the fear of it. You're not going to go and buy another rifle and try to take on the whole American army by yourself again.”

“No, you're right, Uncle. I'm way past that.”

“Good. But you're still afraid of death.”

Ben had no response to Leroy's direct statement. He couldn't deny it. But, he couldn't quite accept it either. Fear of death — wasn't everyone afraid of death?

“You stay with me today.” Leroy broke the growing silence.

“You want me to?”

“Yeah,” the old man nodded. “Stay with me. I don't want to be alone, but I don't want a whole bunch of people around. My granddaughter is going to come in a few hours and make lunch. We'll eat together. Then she'll go back to her family. It'll be all right.”

“I'll stay.”

“All day?”

“If that's what you want.”

“It's what I want. You know what, I think it's time for a nap. Think I'm gonna lay down on this couch for awhile, close my eyes for a little bit. You're gonna stay?”

“I'm gonna stay.”

The old man stretched out his long, thin body, pulled down a Pendleton blanket from the back of the couch and wrapped himself in it. He struggled to get it right, let out a little groan as he tried to get it around broad shoulders. Ben noted the feebleness, reached over from where he sat and tucked it around the callused, bony feet; wondered how many miles they had walked. Leroy twisted around, straightened the pillow so that it fit better under his head, closed his eyes, and sagged into a comfortable sleep.

The sharp, rugged Argentinean Andes Mountains faced a dull blue sky. Clear, cold wind, the always wind of this place tugged at the flimsy satellite dish in Stan Jolly's hand. He set it down, found a flat rock nearby and leaned it against the base. He needed it to point north, toward the equator, toward satellite WV3114.

There was enough power in the platform, the battery checked at 68, but with the sun out, it would be a good time to use the solar panel. Using more rocks to stabilize it, Stan aimed the concave black dish generally toward the west. Precision was not necessary. This solar dish was designed based on the sunflower. It knew to follow the sun in its arc across the sky, always in direct sunlight, a technical solution borrowed from the botany of a plant that learned millennia ago to harness solar power.

Ready, he keyed the computer, waited for connection, entered the password that was written only in his memory. His program. It was his program now, he was the only person remaining who knew of it, the rejected program, perfectly adequate, simple, rejected by HS for a more complicated security program, because for some decision maker, complex equated with better. The program Stan used, this rejected program, once existed on a single disc, a disc left on his desk when he still worked as the Canadian Liaison on Security and Trade. He could not say for certain that the program was given to him, or that it was deliberately left for him to pick up and use, all he could honestly say was that he suspected it was left by the program writer out of frustration at having his program rejected, feeling rejected. The program now only existed in the memory of Stan's platform, labelled Space Invaders and filed fourth on a list of a half-dozen games.

Stan always worried at this point, when he connected to the satellite, entered his password. Would the system suspect him,randomly select him for detailed protocol assessment, search for his uplink position? It didn't. Stan, as ever, was allowed in. He scanned through files of communications, searched for friend's names, scrolled down a list of the last 24 hours, found Monica Bird, stopped and read:

“The bunker contains seven-hundred-and-fifty kilograms of U238 unprocessed Yellowcake uranium. Operative Monica Bird attends regular to bunker.”

Stan clicked up the communication trail to the next message.

“Sensors indicate slight elevation in radiation at and near house at civil address 3112 Avenue H North, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Second Division.”

He clicked up one more, the latest communication, minutes old, held his breath as he read:

“Thunder Bolt Satellite directed to position. Wait for confirmation operative is in bunker before dropping. Ground surveillance directed to positive identification of operative. Gentlemen, we want to be absolutely certain she is in there before we drop.”

Why? The question crawled into Stan's mind. Why a Bolt from Heaven? Why not just shoot her? There were no logical rational answers. This wasn't calculated. Someone decided this way rather than another way. The decision was probably based on nothing more than someone wanted to play with the big toys of war.

The important question was, who turned? Someone turned. Stan frantically searched through the trail of communications, senders, receivers, names — he needed the name, the name of the informer, the enemy within. He raced against his own addition to the program. It was going to automatically disconnect him at one-minute fifty-nine point nine seconds, just before the two-minute mark when the system would perform another security check. He thought of downloading the entire file and reading it later, but a large download would trigger the security program. Too risky. Or was it too risky to save a friend? Seconds clicked, Stan experienced an internal battle between rationality and emotion, expose the informer or risk exposing himself. He heard words coming from his mouth, a prayer, “please, please, please.” His fingers clicked through the list, images appeared on the screen and disappeared in a blur as he searched for a name.

Then, there it was, not in the sender's box; halfway through a message he caught the words, not capitalized, “b.chance”. Betsy Chance. Betsy Chance. The name echoed in Stan's mind. Betsy betrayed Monica.

The message froze to the screen, he was disconnected from the satellite. He read the message again this time in its entirety. It was a longer message with several points from someone using the name RaynCloud, to HS Second Division, a generic address. He reread the important phrase “confirmed data with original b.chance. confirmed safe passage. All payments made.”

Stan fought the wind against the thin dish again, rearranged rocks to support it, used the built-in spectrum analyzer to find the new satellite, the civilian satellite, connected and began sending emails. Now he was the Canadian on vacation, the kayaker, the mountain climber. He stopped and blew on his fingers to warm them, unaware whether it was the keyboard that was cold or the message he was sending.

Abraham Isaac Friesen knew he spent too much time on the computer, knew he spent too much time indoors. He should be outside, even in winter, out on the land, on the bare prairie, watching the sky for weather. But he was a landless man now, city bound, hiding. They gave his land, his farm, to a retired Homeland Security colonel. What would a warmonger know of land? Something to drop bombs on, tear up with tracks and tires, dig trenches in. Land is holy. Soil is life giving. Sift the dirt through your fingers at the beginning of a day, feel the moisture, clumpy; or feel the dry, dusty; hold it to your nose, inhale the smell, fill your body with the richness.

Abe sensed a familiar wind at the same time the screen informed him that another message had been sent to the Spam folder. He clicked the icon. The message was from ‘JACK', all capital letters, not the usual ‘jack sprat' or even ‘Jackie Blue'. Abe wondered at the boldness. He read through the garble until he found the word ‘THAT', also capitalized. He read the message only once before he sprinted his large frame to the door, remembered parka and boots. He was going out. Out into the new dangerous world where he might be found. He was going to find Monica.

Maybe they were watching, probably not. There were seven-billion people on the planet, Abe reasoned — even with technology, they would need seven-billion people at seven-billion monitors to watch all of the people all of the time. He wasn't afraid of the sky.

Dougie knocked on the door to Wesley's room, a loud pounding knock. Wesley was one of those who was difficult to wake in the morning, one of those that stumbled around groggy for the first hour of the day, grouchy, uncommunicative. Dougie had seen him close his eyes between mouthfuls of breakfast, pulled back to the sleep world, the dream world. Every morning, every transition, was difficult for Wesley. It took time for him to shift from that world to this.

But once his eyes were open, once he was into the day, into the job, Wesley stayed with it, completely into the work. Wesley focused on whatever was in front of his eyes, whether it was the work of welding pipes together or the inside of his eyelids and stayed with it. He ignored the world around him as he worked, didn't feel the cold or care about the wind. Dougie figured you could drop a bomb beside Wesley while he worked and as long as it did not knock him off his stool, he would keep working. He was a good employee.